Emergent gravity and the quantum

In this essay, we show that if one starts with a universe with some matter and a cosmological constant, then quantum mechanics naturally induces an attractive gravitational potential and an effective Newton’s coupling. Thus, gravity is an emergent phenomenon and what should be quantized are the fundamental degrees of freedom from which it emerges.

Non-Thermodynamic Emergent Gravity

A new model of gravity is presented here similar to the earlier work of Verlinde on Emergent Gravity but without the use of thermodynamic assumptions. The theory does not use the main assumption of Verlinde on the nature of gravity as an entropic force using the First Law of Thermodynamics. Moreover, it does not use the Equipartition Theorem such that there is no need to define a thermal bath enclosed within a holographic screen. Instead of Equipartition Theorem, the theory uses $E=NE_{p}$, for the total energy of a massive object where $E_{p}$ is the Planck Energy while $N$ is the number of Planck Energy to represent the maximum possible density of information that can reside in matter. The theory uses also the Holographic Principle as the basis for an information-theoretic approach to the nature of gravity. It is shown here that gravity emerges whenever there is an updating of the information within a given volume of space by the presence of matter.

Toward a Mechanism for the Emergence of Gravity

One of the main problems that emergent-gravity approaches face is explaining how a system that does not contain gauge symmetries ab initio might develop them effectively in some regime. We review a mechanism introduced by some of the authors for the emergence of gauge symmetries in [JHEP 10 (2016) 084] and discuss how it works for interacting Lorentz-invariant vector field theories as a warm-up exercise for the more convoluted problem of gravity. Then, we apply this mechanism to the emergence of linear diffeomorphisms for the most general Lorentz-invariant linear theory of a two-index symmetric tensor field, which constitutes a generalization of the Fierz–Pauli theory describing linearized gravity. Finally we discuss two results, the well-known Weinberg–Witten theorem and a more recent theorem by Marolf, that are often invoked as no-go theorems for emergent gravity. Our analysis illustrates that, although these results pinpoint some of the particularities of gravity with respect to other gauge theories, they do not constitute an impediment for the emergent gravity program if gauge symmetries (diffeomorphisms) are emergent in the sense discussed in this paper.

Black hole shadows in Verlinde’s emergent gravity

ABSTRACT We study the effect of baryonic matter and apparent dark matter on black hole (BH) shadow in Verlinde’s emergent gravity. To do so, we consider different baryonic mass profiles and an optically-thin disc region described by a gas in a radial free fall around the BH. Assuming that most of the baryonic matter in the galaxy is located near the Galactic Centre surrounding a supermassive BH, we use two models of power law mass profile for the baryonic matter to study the effect of apparent dark matter on the shadow and the corresponding intensity. We find that the effect of the surrounding matter on the shadow size using observational values is small; however, it becomes significant when the surrounding baryonic matter increases. To this end, we show that the effect of simple power law function in the limit of constant baryonic mass in Verlinde’s theory implies an apparent dark matter effect that is similar to the standard gravity having an isothermal dark matter profile. We also find the intensity of the electromagnetic flux radiation depending on the surrounding mass.

Emergent gravity from hidden sectors and TT deformations

We investigate emergent gravity extending the paradigm of the AdS/CFT correspondence. The emergent graviton is associated to the (dynamical) expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor. We derive the general effective description of such dynamics, and apply it to the case where a hidden theory generates gravity that is coupled to the Standard Model. In the linearized description, generically, such gravity is massive with the presence of an extra scalar degree of freedom. The propagators of both the spin-two and spin-zero modes are positive and well defined. The associated emergent gravitational theory is a bi-gravity theory, as is (secretly) the case in holography. The background metric on which the QFTs are defined, plays the role of dark energy and the emergent theory has always as a solution the original background metric. In the case where the hidden theory is holographic, the overall description yields a higher-dimensional bulk theory coupled to a brane. The effective graviton on the brane has four-dimensional characteristics both in the UV and IR and is always massive.